Police union chief amps up attack on Bill de Blasio

The mayor’s office “is creating a climate where every interaction with police officers turn into a confrontation,” Lynch said.

The president of New York City’s Police Department union, Patrick Lynch, has a message for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio — if it’s broken, fix it.

“When [de Blasio] attacks the New York City police department, he’s attacking his own department and his own policies,” Lynch said to NPR’s “All Things Considered” host Robert Siegel in an interview airing on Tuesday.

He continued, “If the policy is wrong then change it. We’ll follow our orders and effectively police that policy. But when he criticizes his department, he’s criticizing his own policy.”

The mayor’s office “is creating a climate where every interaction with police officers turn into a confrontation,” Lynch said.

Lynch has been a vocal critic of de Blasio since the mayor criticized a grand jury’s decision not to indict an NYPD officer for the death of Eric Garner. At the time, Lynch said that de Blasio’s remarks made police feel “thrown under the bus.” Then, after two NYPD officers were shot and killed last month, the union boss said that “blood on the hands starts on the steps of City Hall.”

Lynch addressed Garner’s death in his NPR interview.“There’s no script for police officers and then what we had is, we had someone who resisted arrest and said ‘I’m not going.’” he said. “So a lot of folks are telling us what we shouldn’t do and what we can’t do but no one is telling us what we should do when a police officer is facing a resisting arrest situation.”